Movie Theaters Responsible For Illegal Downloading

The music industry may have evolved its way around the illegal downloading problem, now that Spotify and other streaming services have more or less taken over as the main way to listen to songs. But movie piracy continues to be a multi-billion-dollar business. Why?

One reason could be that there is no easy way to stream a first-run movie. Netflix and other VOD services can stream older films under licensing deals, and both Netflix NFLX9.65% and Amazon will stream the movies they make themselves.

But other than that movie viewers are out of luck. And so many people continue to pirate the films they want.

According to recent blog post by Marc Hustvedt, co-founder of entertainment news site Tubefilter, one of the main reasons why piracy is still so prevalent is the stranglehold that movie theater owners continue to have on the release of new films. As he puts it:

“Exhibitors are dug in, resisting change and fighting off innovative distributors from Netflix to Amazon who are adapting to consumer demand while still actually working to preserve the experience of watching a movie in a theater.”

Hustvedt, who is also the co-founder of a new movie studio called Supergravity Films, argues that this stranglehold increases piracy because it requires movie makers to submit to an artificial 90-day “window” in which their films can only appear in theaters.